IGTRAUMA responds to the premise of weep for painting, re-interpreting the essence of a ‘reverence experience’ of a painting that has “moved them in a deep and lasting way.” I considered my encounters with numerous paintings where the narratives transferred carry loss, grief and trauma — as a result of colonisation. In sharing a similar personal narrative, the idea of transferring the ‘shared experience’ via artwork mirrors that of a trauma, as passed down through generations of colonised peoples. The materiality of IGTRAUMA expresses this relationship via its materiality incorporating notions of domesticity — commonly a space where the symptoms of trauma are both formed, expressed and transferred.

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Context: This work was made in response to the a 'curatorial brief' for a group show called weeping for painting as penned by its initiator (and former collaborator) Domenico de Clario. It read: A selection of artists are invited to recall and examine their relationship to a specific painting made by another artist at any time in history. The invited artist is encouraged to choose one particular painting that has at some point been experienced in the flesh and has moved them in a deep and lasting way, perhaps has even made them weep. Each artist is invited to make their version of this painting (and perhaps of the experience of standing in front of it, or perhaps of recalling it by speaking about it to others, or of any other aspect of their relationship with it) with the freedom to re-interpret the essence of what they believe sits at the heart of their ‘reverence experience’.